


London is Strange

by KtwoNtwo



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU for all listed fandoms, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Playing fast & loose with timelines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22603609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KtwoNtwo/pseuds/KtwoNtwo
Summary: John Watson: Practitioner of the Mystic Arts and Master of the London Sanctum.(Otherwise known as what happens when you toss the MCU and Sherlock into a blender pulsing just enough to blend the two but not enough to make them unrecognizable, adding a pinch of Earth 616, a generous scoop of concept from another fanfiction, and a dash of mythology.  Serve immediately garnished with the Time Stone.)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 31





	1. Homecoming

John Watson spotted her as soon as he cleared customs at Heathrow. She was leaning against a post in full view of the exit doorway looking at her mobile. John sighed. He could avoid her but maybe things were better this way. He’d find out what exactly Mycroft Holmes wanted before he tackled his primary reason for returning to London. It would be worth the time to know if the British Government was going to be a help, a hindrance, or a neutral party. John switched his duffle to his good shoulder then angled his line of travel toward Mycroft’s alias bearing assistant. 

As he got closer he realized that the _definitely-not-named-Anthea_ had sometime in the last two and a half years traded in her omnipresent blackberry for the newest model Stark-phone. She was also thinner, wearing a more sensible shoes, and was clearly running on a bit less sleep than was optimum. 

She looked up as he approached and smiled, “Dr. Watson.”

He cocked his head slightly in acknowledgement and replied, “So what should I call you this time?”

The smile went from being just a mask to something a bit more genuine, “It’s Abigail for the rest of the week.”

She finished her text then moved in beside him, covering the side carrying the duffle. John felt more than saw the two agents he’d pegged as soon as he’d exited the jetway peel off and head wherever agents went after they’d been dismissed from their particular task. _Abigail-not-Anthea_ made an after you motion and they proceeded out of the concourse heading for a black limousine with heavily tinted windows waiting at the curb. 

Abigail indicated that he should place his duffle in the boot then proceeded to open the rear door of the vehicle. John was a little surprised that she didn’t follow him into the car but instead simply closed the door behind him leaving him in the presence of Mycroft Holmes.

Mycroft on the surface looked much as he’d last seen him. John however had more tools at his disposal since that time and he carefully used the few which would be less likely to be noticed. Much like his assistant Mycroft was running on a less than optimal amount of sleep along with a high degree of stress. He was also rather worried about something, John could not tell just what without being obvious, so he decided to wait and see if he could discern anything from the conversation that was clearly going to commence shortly. The car pulled out into traffic.

“Let me be the first to welcome you back Dr. Watson.”

Mycroft’s voice and delivery was just as smooth as he’d remembered.

“It’s good to be back.”

“You’ve been quite the traveler since we last saw each other. New York, the Philippines, Nepal?”

Well that made things clearer. Mycroft Holmes, or more likely his minions, had managed to mostly lose track of him since New York. Well, considering what he’d been doing in the interim, John would have been more surprised if Mycroft’s people had been able to track him. All of which left the unanswered question.

“Why would you be interested in my travels? I’m sure there are much more important people which you need to track.”

There was a flash of something pained from Mycroft, “I made a promise,” was all he said.

John inwardly winced. He knew that there was only one person who could extract such a promise from Mycroft Holmes and have him keep it. It also meant that John was going to be on Mycroft’s radar permanently whether he wanted to be or not. John thought quickly. Maybe this could be a blessing in disguise. Use what and who you know to keep others from getting too interested in things they shouldn’t know anything about. 

“I hope you didn’t fire anyone for losing track,” John started. “I’d hate to have inadvertently been the cause of someone’s job loss.”

“Nothing so dire; merely a reassignment or two, although I am interested in your travels over the last few years after that fuss in New York.”

“That mess in New York was actually where it all started,” John started to explain. “You were aware I was looking into Medecins Sans Frontiers?”

“Yes. I was under the impression you were looking for a MSF posting in Pakistan or Afghanistan.”

“At the time I was. Most of that region is coordinated out of an office in New York so after the funeral…” 

John had to catch himself mentally to stop the emotions that went with that simple statement. 

“I decided to take a bit of a holiday and check things out as a side project. Unfortunately for me I’d just managed to get over the jet lag when those aliens invaded Manhattan.”

“Not the most auspicious beginning for your time in the States,” Mycroft commented dryly.

“I ended up on the periphery of the fighting and spent most of my time helping get civilians into the shelter of the subway.”

It had been a bit more than that John remembered.

_He’d heard the sounds before he’d seen anything. It had been a horrendous crash from somewhere ahead of him. Then he’d rounded the corner and saw the hole in the sky. Shortly thereafter he’d spotted one of the aliens on something that looked like a futuristic sled that flew taking pot shots at cars and people indiscriminately with blue energy beams from some sort of hand weapon. Surprisingly not everyone was running and screaming. As he watched from several blocks away some office workers with impeccable timing shoved a desk out a broken window dropping it directly on the flying sled, downing it. He didn’t see if the alien survived the fall._

_John had started working his way toward the area where the sled had fallen. He’d figured that if he was lucky the hand weapon might just have survived. From what he’d seen of the armor on the aliens John had figured nothing short of armor piercing rounds or an extremely lucky shot would hurt them. Given how the blue beams had torn through cars he figured that his best bet would be to see if he could liberate one of the invader’s weapons. It had worked for the Taliban in Afghanistan and he didn’t see why it wouldn’t work here._

_As he moved closer to the fighting John noticed that someone had managed to organize the police and other first responders. They were pulling fire alarms in buildings and getting everyone they could to head for shelter in the subway. He also noticed small groups of people carefully heading toward the fighting. As he came up on a group of three, John pegged them as veterans of some sort, one of them noticed him and asked, “Hey man, are you armed?” When John had said he wasn’t but that he planned to see if he couldn’t liberate one of those beam weapons they had laughed, called him a crazy Brit, and handed him a pistol along with a clip of ammunition. They had wished him good luck and headed down a side street together at a lope moving in sync like a seasoned squad._

_But that wasn’t the strangest encounter of the day. John had managed to work his way to where he’d seen the sled fall. It wasn’t as straight forward as he’d intended since a couple buildings had partially collapsed meaning he’d had to take a detour or two. He’d found the sled and the alien but they were both half under not only the office desk but also what looked like a chunk of decorative concrete that had fallen off a building. Unfortunately, the weapon was stuck somewhere under the alien’s body and John knew that there was no way he’d be able to shift the concrete slab by hand to get to it._

_Looking around he’d spotted a backhoe sitting at what looked like a street repair site. He’d been lucky, the keys were still in it and it started right up. He’d just managed to figure out what all the controls did when a ginger in a black cat-suit dashed around a corner a block or so away with two of the aliens hot on her heels. Judging how fast she was moving John figured she’d be able to lose them but for the fact that one of the sled flying things 2 blocks further down noticed the chase and decided to join it._

_John hadn’t had to think very hard. He leaned out of the backhoe cab and whistled. The ginger took in the situation at a glance and headed in his direction. It was relatively quick. The flyer overshot the ginger attempting to head her off and John rotated the backhoe with the bucket arm up directly impacting the alien. The alien went flying into the side of a building, the sled kept on going up the street and John found that his rotation had stopped in the perfect position to drop the bucket on one of the aliens who was chasing the ginger on foot._

_The crunch had been quite satisfying. He jumped out of the cab to see if the ginger was ok just in time to see her kick out the other alien’s knee joint and shoot him in the eye, killing him instantly. “Good shot!” was all John could think to say._

_She smiled, barely breathing hard, and replied “Thank you” with a slight hint of a Russian accent._

_She then looked at her former opponent and liberated a nasty looking weapon about the size of a short barreled shotgun. John looked at the size of the alien and figured that what she’d just grabbed was the equivalent of a handgun for them._

_She handed him the weapon, “Blue stud fires, Line of sight, no recoil. Aim for joints and eyes. These are better than guns but the armor takes a bit to burn through.”_

_He had nodded his understanding sensing that she had more information to impart._

_“We are trying to keep them contained,” she had continued. “Can you hold this street?”_

_“I can try.” John had replied._

_“I’ll see if I can send you some assistance,” she said as she started to turn away then she turned back as if a thought had occurred, “Don’t shoot the red and gold flying armor, the large blond with the cape and the hammer, or the big green monster…they are on our side.”_

“After the hole in the sky closed up,” John continued, “I found my way to the nearest hospital and offered my services.”

Mycroft nodded, “I did get a report about that. Something about setting up and running a triage station in the Metro-General Hospital car park?”

“Spent over a week doing that before it wasn’t needed anymore,” John replied. “I ended up working with a bunch of really good people one of whom told me about a charity that needed help setting up a clinic in Nepal. I met with one of the principles of the charity stateside and in relatively short order I was in Kathmandu”

It sounded a little thin but there was no way John was going to relate what had really happened.

_Dr. Stephen Strange was a damn good general physician despite the neuro specialty and damaged hands. John had found him relatively easy to work with. John had been warned by other hospital staff when the man had shown up to volunteer but the personal issues alluded to hadn’t appeared. John didn’t know whether it was his experience in dealing with the genius that had been Sherlock or if Strange had changed after the accident that had well-neigh ruined his hands or some combination of both he’d not had any complaints. The only problem John had with the man was the fact that he was eerily similar in stature and features to Sherlock. Luckily his accent, mannerisms, and specialty were different enough so John became inured rather quickly to the physical resemblance. In fact they had hit things off so well that Strange had hauled him off to what could have only been called a mansion when he found out that John had been bunking down in the Doctor’s lounge when off shift. After things had calmed down to the point the triage unit was no longer necessary John remembered thinking that things were finally going to get back to normal in his life. Of course, that’s when his entire world had been turned on its head._

_They’d been sitting in Strange’s study with some good Scotch and talking about John’s future plans. Stephen had been quizzing him about his experience with alternative medicine. Apparently something he said sparked a cord because Stephen had got up, rummaged around in a desk, and came up with a medical file._

_“Take a look at that and tell me what you think,” he’d said._

_John had read the file. It was a file of a patient who’d been in a rather serious car accident. While the major injuries were bad enough the damage to the forearms and hands had been extensive. In fact, John wasn’t sure exactly how they had managed to save them. Just looking at the chart John knew that the patient would be living with serious pain and limited movement in his hands for the rest of his life. All in all it made the nerve damage and intermittent tremor in his left hand seem like a minor inconvenience._

_“Patient of yours?” John had asked not looking up. “Amazing that the hands are even able to move but doesn’t he have serious problems with pain and range of movement?”_

_Strange had chuckled and John looked up from the file to see Stephen had both hands up and was wiggling his fingers at him._

_John registered the location of scars and his jaw dropped, “What? Really? How??”_

_He reached out without thinking and grabbed one of Stephen’s hands to examine it. The scars were prominent, clearly the remnants of multiple surgeries but there was no stiffness or any other indication of limitation._

_After a minute or so of John’s examination Stephen brought up his other hand then grabbed both of John’s wrists with a firm grip and pulled him to his feet dumping the file on the floor._

_“Come. See.” Was all he said._

_John had gone and that had started the most exhaustive, exhilarating and mind bending two years of his life._

“I ended up spending over a year and a half in Nepal setting up clinics and organizing medical matters for the charity,” John explained. 

_And stuffing my brain with everything and anything I could learn about the Mystic Arts._

“When I’d set up everything so it would all run mostly on its own I decided it was time to come home.”

Mycroft looked him up and down probably attempting to align what he was deducing with what John had said.

“Might I inquire as to your plans?”

John in a fit of impishness decided to answer the question with a simple yes and smiled.

Somehow this seemed to discomfort Mycroft because he continued, “If you find yourself at loose ends I still retain the lease to Baker Street and I do know of some openings which might be in line with your skills.”

Well, John thought to himself, Baker Street along with a job where Mycroft could keep a close eye on him and meddle if need be. He had expected some sort of offer but not a quite so blatant one. The stress that Mycroft was under clearly was having an effect. John decided that if he got a chance he’d at least give a shot at ameliorating the situation. Having the British Government in less than top form especially given the mystic portents and signs that Stephen had been picking up was to say the least _a bit not good_.

“I’m actually set for the moment,” John replied. “The charity has owned a London property for years. Unfortunately the last keeper of the place passed on and they’ve not managed to find a suitable replacement. Given the real estate prices the Board has decided to sell it but they need someone to make a full inventory of the place first just in case there’s something highly valuable hidden in the attic.”

Mycroft’s eyebrows went up, “I wasn’t aware you had that type of expertise.”

John grinned, “Don’t really need it. It comes with a stipend, a budget to hire experts, and of course there’s always the all-knowing google! I can also tap the Board members themselves if I run across something completely out of the ordinary.”

“I see,” Mycroft said. “So where should I drop you off?”

John relayed the address and the rest of the trip passed in silence. 

When they arrived John reached out and shook Mycroft’s hand, skin to skin contact worked best for this sort of thing. He implanted a minor compulsion regarding proper nutrition and the importance of rest.

“Thank you for the lift and the welcome.”

“It’s good to have you back Dr. Watson.”

John stood on the pavement and watched the vehicle pull into traffic. He mentally sighed. Lying by omission to Mycroft Holmes was probably the least dangerous thing he had to do today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this plot bunny has been hopping around for a while and finally got big enough to actually get words on the page. Many thanks to [KatHarkness_Katara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatHarkness_Katara) for hitting this chapter with both the beta and Brit-pick sticks. Any remaining mistakes or anomalies are all my fault. In addition, the concept for empathetic, sentient London was at least in part sparked by [The Master of London by Teacup_of_Doom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/587437%22)


	2. The Sanctum

It took several hours but John managed to make a rough survey of the London Sanctum house from top to bottom. By the time he was done he repaired to the study seriously puzzled. The house, while warded to the hilt, just didn’t seem at all like a Sanctum. In fact, it appeared to be just a normal house albeit with furnishings that would have fit nicely into the collection of the V&A. There were quite a few magical bits and bobs scattered about but nothing of the caliber of item that John would have expected to find in a Sanctum. This didn’t even touch the fact that there was no damage at all that he could see. There was no indication at all of the destruction Strange and Wong had watched through the portal when Kaecilius had breached the Sanctum and killed its protector. 

_“Would you be willing to go to London and take control of the Sanctum there?” Stephen had asked him some weeks ago._

_“I thought the London Sanctum was destroyed by the Kaecilius and his Zealots.”_

_“So did I,” he replied. “The explosion should have taken everything out in a half block radius but the house is still standing, apparently intact.”_

_“But I’m nowhere near trained enough for this,” John had objected._

_“There’s nothing more that you need to learn which would require the intensive environment of Kamar-Taj,” Strange had replied. “I think anything else you’d be liable to need you’ll be able to get with self-study or just wing it now that you’ve got the basics down.”_

_"Fun and joy; just what I needed, another residency!”_

_Stephen had smiled at that, “Exactly! At least with this one you’ll have a shot at getting a decent amount of sleep.”_

_“Why does that not reassure me?”_

_“I know, I know. To be honest we are a little short of trained sorcerers right now.” Strange said ruefully. “I’ve had to over-staff Singapore. Since that was Dormammu’s access point it’s now a thin spot. Seems like everything, and their sisters, and their cousins, and their aunts who want to gain a foothold here are trying to use Singapore to move in.”_

_"Wonderful,” John replied. “Why don’t we have the same problem in London?”_

_“London was an attack both to and from this plane. I’m not sensing any weakness there. However, I’m sensing some intermittent fluctuations in general from the UK so I’d feel better if we had an idea of London’s status just in case.”_

_"Which brings us back to the initial question,” John stated, “Why me?”_

_“Wong has been doing research and the one thing that he’s found consistently in the records is that the London Sanctum is considered a bit finicky. It seems to function just like the other Sanctums when a master in residence but there are indications, especially in the older records, that there’s something different about it.” John must have made a face because Stephen continued, "It’s not like you are going to be out of touch. There are such things as cell phones and in a pinch you’re only a sling ring portal away from here.”_

_"Yeah,” John muttered, “If I could only get one to open up consistently in the place I aim for not somewhere else, like halfway up Everest.”_

_"_ _Strange had ignored that last comment and merely replied, “Besides, I have a feeling about this.”_

John stood in the study and tried to think it through. He knew that the house had been known as the Sanctum for quite a while, at least from the Victorian era. He also knew it looked like the Sanctum, at least in the mystical warding sense, from the outside. However, given that Kaecilius didn’t attack the house directly and there was no external damage to speak of; logically the main part of the Sanctum must be elsewhere. That meant that what he was looking for was a magical access point connecting the house to the actual Sanctum. 

The only magical access points John was familiar with were the mystical gates used to travel to Kamar-Taj and the windows in the New York Sanctum. He was aware that neither of those constructs radiated much magic unless they were in active use. Suddenly, all the small magic items strewn all over the house made a lot more sense. After all, the best place to hide a red fish was in a pond full of other red fish. An inactive magic doorway or window would radiate less than the umbrella he’d found in the stand in the hall which was charmed to lessen the intensity of rain in its general vicinity. John sighed and sat down in an overstuffed wing back chair. This was clearly going to take a bit of mental work to isolate the doorway’s magical signature from those of all the other items. He opened his senses to the mystical and started in. 

John woke up. Judging from the light coming in the windows it was late in the afternoon. Jet lag had clearly caught up to him. For the umpteenth time in the last 48 hours John cursed the fact that he’d had to use mundane travel to get home. He then reminded himself, again, that given his interception at the airport, doing things the quick way would have raised many more questions than he was prepared to answer, especially from the British Government.

John decided that he needed to get back to his task and suddenly realized he knew where the doorway was located. He had to smile about it. Even though the access point most likely had been there since the house was built he still found it funny that the doorway to the magical world was the cupboard under the stairs. He wondered if this was a case of literature imitating life and then discarded it. If that had been the case the access point would have just as easily been located in the attic, the basement, or maybe even a wardrobe.

It was relatively easy to find the door which in and of itself did not look terribly remarkable. John opened it carefully only to see what he would normally expect to see, a set of shelves containing storage boxes. He shut the door and looked at it again. Placing his hand on the door jamb he sent a small pulse of magic into the wood. Previously invisible runic writing started to glow all around the door frame. Unfortunately, it was in a language that John couldn’t read. He looked at it and attempted to memorize at least a few of the runes so that he could see if someone at Kamar-Taj or elsewhere knew what they were. As he watched though, the runes seemed to waver and morph into something that looked similar to Latin. Now that John could work with. Keeping his hand on the jamb he read the Latin silently. Nothing happened. John then murmured the words out loud, just in case it happened to be an incantation. Sure enough, the door felt different. Opening the door again he found that his hunch had proved correct because instead of the storage cupboard there was now a stairway leading down.

The stairway was dark but someone had left an old fashioned metal torch hanging by a leather strap from a hook on the wall. John grabbed it and much to his surprise it not only worked but produced a decently bright beam of light. He chose to interpret this as a good omen and proceeded to carefully descend until he reached another door. 

John tried the same trick with the lower door jamb only to find that nothing happened. The jamb didn’t glow and the door wouldn’t open regardless of what he tried. Frustrated he looked around and noticed that the door at the top of the stair was still ajar. _I wonder if this is the magical equivalent of an air lock,_ he thought to himself. _Only one way to find out_ , he concluded as he trooped back up the stairs to close the door. This time around the lower door obliged with glowing runes, a different incantation and entrance into what, John presumed, was the actual London Sanctum.

From the state of the room, John could see that this was where the explosion Stephen and Wong had witnessed had happened. The damage was extensive. There had been a main explosion emanating from the area opposite the door and partially taking out walls into the adjoining rooms on either side. Judging from both the debris and the magical residue this had once been and area for item storage. There were blackened spots in a variety of places on the ceiling and the remaining walls. Kaecilius had grabbed what he’d wanted from the rooms then had somehow ignited any unwanted items which had survived the initial. It wasa testament to the original builders of the Sanctum that the damage had been limited to three rooms and whole area hadn’t collapsed in on itself. 

John moved into the destroyed area playing the torch over the floor. A thunk behind him made him turn. The door he had entered by had closed and disappeared. He went back to examine the wall. Visually the door wasn’t there. Tactilely it was right where he had expected it to be. He experimented. The second incantation made the door reappear at least until he took his hand off it which made it promptly disappear again. 

_Interesting_ John thought. The entrance door had been at the point of a triangular room. The explosion had originated at another point. He could see that the adjoining rooms had also been triangular. John moved through to the adjoining room to the right. Examining the walls as he went he discovered the remnants of some rather substantial magical protections. John’s admiration for the original builders went up another notch. Whomever had designed this area had anticipated a potential explosion, at least from the inside, and planned accordingly. Logically this meant that there may be more to the Sanctum than just this storage area.

John carefully began picking his way through the rubble trailing his hand along the wall. It didn’t take long for him to find another door which he could feel but not see. He tried the second incantation again. Nothing happened. He tried the incantation for the door at the top of the stairs; still nothing. Remembering the alleged finicky nature of the Sanctum John decided to try something.

“Please let me in?”

The door appeared. John figured that politeness would be in order.

“Thank you,” he said and opened the door.

The room beyond was also triangular in shape. It was furnished as a comfortable reading room in a mish mash of Victorian to 1950’s style. As he moved into the room he realized that there was very dim indirect lighting not caused by his torch.

“Lux?”

The lighting brightened to the point that the contents of the room were clearly visible. John walked up to a chair with what looked like a lamp beside it. The lamp obligingly turned on. He looked carefully at the lamp; there was no cord. Even Kamar-Taj had electricity and wi-fi. Only in the depths of the Library was magical lighting still used, primarily to protect the ancient tomes stored therein. Despite the furniture John reasoned that this place was old enough that the builders did not want the books and other manuscripts damaged by candles or oil lamps which, at the time of its construction, left magic as the only option. 

Since another door was clearly visible John decided to continue exploring. Three triangular rooms later John exited what he had begun to think of as the library into what looked like a workshop. There were two workshop rooms. The door from the second workshop exited back into the area that had been destroyed. By this point John was beginning to get a mental picture of the shape of the complex. If he was correct then all these triangular rooms were arranged around a center which was most likely shaped like a pentagon. 

_You can’t beat the classics when you are trying to protect something,_ John thought to himself. He’d bet his sling ring that the heart of the sanctum was in that center area. All of which meant that the door he needed would most likely be located directly opposite the door to the stairs. The biggest problem was going to be finding it. 

It turned out not to be a problem at all. By the time John had worked his way back into the library room that was directly opposite where he had entered there was a door visible that John knew he hadn’t seen the first time. 

“Thank you,” he said aloud.

John wondered briefly about the nature of the Sanctum. He knew that many of the very powerful ancient magic items tended to be at least somewhat sentient and, in effect, picked their wielder. Stephen’s cloak of levitation was an extreme example. The thing had attached itself so closely to Strange that he had a hard time getting it to stay home on the rare occasion he needed go somewhere without it. Stephen even joked that he thought the thing might be in love with him. At this point John was beginning to suspect from the behavior of the doors, the historically documented “finicky nature” of the Sanctum might just be due to the fact that it, in and of itself, was a powerful at least partly sentient magic item.

 _Could be dangerous_ , John thought as he opened the door to the center of the complex.

The room did not, as he had expected, have 5 walls. Instead it was circular with a dome arching several stories over the center of the floor. The floor itself was also interesting. It seemed to be a circular ring of flagstones that gave way to a grassy circle. Of course the thing that drew the most attention in the room was the rough-hewn standing stone that stood in the middle of the grass directly under the center of the dome. There was some sort of light source in the dome that shed a circle of light down directly on the grass and the stone while leaving the flagstone circle in partial shadow. The temperature was balmy like a pleasant summer day in contrast to the 10 degrees normally found in an underground structure. 

_Come to think of it_ , John mused, _this entire area is warmer than I expected given the fact that it appears to be completely subterranean. I wonder if this is the reason._

Well, Stephen had told him to wing it so John didn’t hesitate for long. He took off his shoes and socks then walked carefully across the grass and put his hand on the stone.

At first nothing happened then John found himself immersed in his own memories. Training in Kamar-Taj, the battle of New York, the fall, meeting Sherlock, getting shot, training, medical school, university, protecting his sister from his alcoholic father; in short, everything that had made him into the person he was now was laid bare in quick succession. It left John gasping but he did not remove his hand from the stone.

The images started again. This time it seemed to be a mix of people and historical events. Some he recognized like Lestrade and the Olympic opening ceremony others he didn’t. There was a night of fire and terror that John thought might be the Blitz. There were reunions of soldiers returning from the trenches of WWI. A fancy wedding and some sort of lower class family celebration were shown in turn as equally important. Each image appeared to be older than the previous and there seemed to be just as many people shown as events. A couple of gentleman in Victorian era attire walking arm in arm caught his attention before they were gone. A bit further on he saw someone in Elizabethan style dress working by lamp light in a garret room on some sort of manuscript. The images were fast and relentless. John felt like he was being force fed history via an old fashioned video tape on rewind.

Just about the point where John thought he couldn’t take any more the images ceased. John opened his eyes. He was still standing on grass with his hand on the stone. That, however, was where the similarity ended. The stone and its grassy circle seemed to be in a ring of trees starting just beyond the flagstones. The air smelled clean and fresh with a hint of wood smoke. John had just enough time to look around when he heard someone talking.

“Yes, Yes, I’m coming,” the male voice said. “I understand you need to show me something. I’ll get there momentarily.”

John looked in the direction of the voice and spotted what looked like a man through the ring of trees. He had on what John could only surmise was ancient clothing. At least it looked sort of like the kind of things people wore in that TV series about the detective monk. John tried to remember when that had been set and vaguely remembered it had been allegedly sometime in the 1100’s. Of course that presumed that the producers had been somewhat accurate in their clothing depictions.

John knew exactly when the man spotted him. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at John for a moment before moving onto the flagstones and into the grassy area. He came to a stop about six paces in front of John.

“Hello,” he said.

There was a slight echo John noted. It sounded a bit like when you were midway between two speakers and they were slightly out of sync with each other.

“Hello,” John replied and thought about moving away from the stone.

“I don’t think you want to let go of the stone,” the man said before John could move. “I have no idea what would happen not to mention that she’d be a bit perturbed at both of us since she has gone to such trouble to allow us to speak to each other.”

“Ok,” John replied befuddled. “So if I might ask, who are you? Who is she? And what the heck does she want us to talk about?”

The man laughed and he suddenly looked much younger. John’s estimate of the man’s age dropped from the mid-30’s to mid-20’s. 

“Sorry,” the man said, “I seem to be doing things backwards as usual. To answer your questions; I am Emrys, she is Londinium and I have no idea at all as to what she wishes us to talk about.” 

“Wonderful,” John muttered under his breath. “I’m John, nice to meet you,” he continued in a conversational tone. “I have no real idea what the heck is going on except I was having a series of visions going backwards in time until I stopped here.”

It seemed to be Emrys’ turn to mutter something under his breath before continuing. “From whence did you start?” he asked.

“Probably a thousand years or so from now plus or minus.”

“Hmm,” Emrys seemed to take that statement in stride, “Have the Gods returned?

If this was really the past and not just some elaborate hallucination, John wondered if Emrys had the gift of prophecy. That would explain his lack of surprise from John’s clothing and statement. The other alternative was some sort of alternative dimension or parallel universe. John had seen some other dimensions and knew about the multiverse but they all had a vaguely unreal feeling; this didn’t. It definitely wasn’t that bizarre construct that was the mirror dimension, where anything could happen and usually did. He supposed it could be an entirely parallel universe; such things did exist although he’d never heard of anyone who had traveled to one. Given the rewind effect John decided to continue with his time travel hypothesis and answer accordingly.

“A couple of the Asgardians who were once worshiped as such have shown up. There are also a bunch of people with unique abilities who might have been considered god-like in times past.”

Emrys pursed his lips, “Are there sorcerers still who protect this plane?”

“Yes.”

Emrys’ gaze grew distracted. It was similar to the look Sherlock had on his face when he was making a foray into his mind palace.

“I see,” he said clearly not to John. “This is the beginning then. Yes you were correct.” His eyes cleared and Emrys addressed John again with a smile, “Good luck living with Londinium, I am relatively sure that we will eventually see each other again and you’ll need to tell me how it goes.”

With that cryptic message the clearing waivered and John could see the walls of the room in the center of the sanctum coming into focus just at the tree line. Right before Emrys faded from view John thought he saw a very familiar looking chain around the man’s neck. 

Well that explains a lot, John thought just before he slumped down the stone and everything grayed out for a moment.


	3. The Master of London

John quickly discovered over the next few weeks that his little time trip had somehow forged a connection with the Sanctum. He seemed to always know just where he was in relation to not only the Sanctum house doorway but also to the physical location of the Sanctum itself most notably the stone at it's center. 

The stone itself was an anomaly. No other Sanctum had one yet the London Sanctum had clearly been built around it. John was almost certain that the intelligence he was seeing in the Sanctum’s reactions to his exploration of the contents was also somehow tied to the stone. If magical weapons and artifacts like Stephen’s cloak of levitation could, over time, develop a sort of sentience John didn’t see why a stone that had been sitting at the center of a magical building for generations couldn’t too. Even that, however, didn’t fully explain what John was sensing. John had spent hours on the phone with Wong to see if there was anything in either the Kamar-Taj or the New York Sanctum libraries which might be helpful in explaining just what this stone was and what it could do. 

Finally, an exasperated Wong had told him, “You are clearly now the master of the Sanctum. It has a library. If you think it’s intelligent just ask it to show you what books are lying around that would be helpful!”

Having nothing to lose John had asked. He was lead to a small leather bound notebook. It was one volume of the private journal of an unnamed “Majical Master of London.” Judging from the language and the style of script John figured that it had been written somewhere in the 1600s. The book itself was marginally helpful. From it, John had learned the Sanctum housed the physical anchor of an entity which was referred to as Londinium and nominally gender identified, to the extent something that was without a biological form had a gender, as female. This wasn’t much of a surprise. John had suspected it might be something like this from the conversation he’d had with Emrys but it was nice to have it confirmed. To make things even more surreal, the author of the book asserted that Londinium was nothing more or less than the magical embodiment of London and its environs and that it had been so since at least the time the Roman Empire had invaded. He also learned that the connection he had with the Sanctum seemed to be only the first step in a process. The journal also vaguely referenced a ritual that allegedly “attuned” the sorcerer charge with guarding the sanctum to the entity. That set off another round of research and eventually a late night call to Stephen.

_So do you think I should go ahead and do the attunement ritual? John had asked._

_“From what you’ve found and what we’ve uncovered it doesn’t look like you need it to be the Master of the Sanctum,” Strange had replied._

_“Why do I hear an incipient ‘But’?”_

_“Probably because I was thinking it rather loudly.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Something is coming,” Stephen said. “The nine realms are showing some instability and it’s getting worse by the day. Earth is the primary connection between them and the rest of the universe so anything coming out of the realms will have to go through here. Every indication I’m getting is pointing to somewhere in Northern Europe being the epicenter of whatever it is.”_

_John had to ask, “You can’t get anything more specific by looking ahead?”_

_“Too many variables at this point. If you don’t have a specific event as a starting point using the time stone to examine the branching futures all too quickly results in an exponential number of possibilities.”_

_“Becoming effectively useless.” John stated flatly then added, “Inevitably, by the time you get something concrete you can work with we’ll be up to our ears in whatever the incoming mess happens to be.”_

_“No doubt.”_

_“You think we’ll need everything we have then?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“The only thing Wong has found about this ritual indicates that it hasn’t been done since sometime before World War II. I’ve found some hints in a few of the books that indicate it’s dangerous to your sanity.”_

_Strange snorted a half laugh, “Then given the fact that your sanity has been questionable for years you should have no problem at all!”_

_"Oh aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” John had responded before agreeing to let Stephen know before he attempted anything and ringing off._

What little information John managed to find indicated that the person attuning him or herself needed to be ritually prepared and enter the chamber containing the stone. Only the person to be “attuned” could be left in the chamber when the door was closed. As for exactly what the ritual itself entailed, unhelpfully, there was no description at all; only a note that the “unworthy” or “unprepared” would be “driven mad”.

If that wasn’t worry some enough the alleged preparations were similarly vague. The closest thing John could think of, from a single description in one old manuscript, was patient protocols for intestinal surgery. Cross checking with Wong indicated that historically the cleansing prescribed for dealing with major magical forces was indeed surprisingly similar to preparations for abdominal surgery. John supposed that having the contents of your alimentary system strewn about the place would be just as detrimental to magic as it was to surgery and thus was best avoided. 

Three weeks after he’d taken his first trip into the basement John was prepared. Stephen had used a portal to get to London and sat in the basement library while John had entered the center to commune and hopefully attune himself to the stone. From John’s point of view, the actual attunement had proved to be a bit anti-climactic. He had simply stated his intent to be attuned to the Sanctum, waited a bit, put his hand on the stone, then walked out with a clear sense of connection to the entity calling itself Londinium. Stephen’s congratulations had disabused him of his perceived anticlimactic nature of the event; he’d been gone for three days.

John very quickly discovered that his attunement came with the ability to mentally communicate with Londinium. Unfortunately, this communication did not take the form of words. It seemed to be pictures accompanied by emotions. Surprisingly, it only took him about a month to adjust to the mental intrusion of visuals, feelings or both coming from the stone; then it took another half a month to convince Londinium that there were proper times and places for such communication to occur. It was somewhat like dealing with an excited Sherlock on a case; all ‘slow down’, ‘please explain that’ and the occasional ‘bit not good.’ He figured out shortly thereafter that Londinium could, in effect, look over his shoulder whenever and wherever he was. By the time he had a chance to really think about things John concluded that Emrys’ parting words to him had been one-part sarcastic and one-part commiseration.

All in all John found that having a connection to Londinium was more useful than bothersome. In a lot of respects it was better than a London A-Z. He started taking long walks just to get her to show him what things had looked like earlier in her history. She knew all the best ways to get from one place to another, pointed out the CCTV cameras and as near as he could tell she could even influence them by slowing their rotation or messing with their focus or both. John assumed that some poor minion of Mycroft’s who was supposed to keep track of him was probably going completely nuts trying to figure out why the CCTV was suddenly so unreliable.

Londinium also would provide what John came to mentally think of as “commentary” on certain people. He wasn’t quite sure what her criteria was but she clearly deemed some of her denizens more important than others. There was a random guy walking down the pavement that she associated with gambling halls and vaudeville shows. Sarah, Molly and Mike Stanford all evoked medical professionals each from a different time period. Mrs. Hudson she seem to have classified as one in a long line of ladies who rented rooms or ran boarding houses. One of the more interesting responses to a person occurred when he met Lestrade for a beer for the first time after he’d been attuned. John was a little surprised when he received a series of images of what looked like a variety law enforcement personnel from numerous different time periods going all the way back to a Roman soldier along with feelings of excitement and appreciation. Clearly, Londinium had a “thing” for the police who patrolled within her borders.

Her reaction to Mycroft was also interesting. When he intercepted John at the far end of one of his rambles with an offer of a ride home she gave him an image of a spider in a web. Over the course of the ride she gave him images of a Knight in full armor protecting a hazy figure that clearly had a crown, a suited gentleman standing in what looked like the shadow of Winston Churchill, and Mycroft himself standing behind Dame Judy Dench as she had appeared in her roll of M in the more recent James Bond movies. Not that any of these was a surprise. Sherlock had told John that Mycroft was in effect the British Government. John just sighed to himself and vowed to engage in some serious binge watching to give Londinium a better selection of popular culture referents to use in communication.

Despite all that was on his plate, things seemed to be going pretty smoothly. John was making progress doing just what he’d told Mycroft that first day, clearing out the sanctum house in preparation for sale. In the actual Sanctum he was busy, with a crew imported via sling ring, shoring up walls and reestablishing the arcane protections. 

Sherlock’s homeless network had also discovered he was back, presumably by spotting him on one of his rambles about the city, and seemed to consider him worthy of protection. They would provide the occasional tidbit of information and he reciprocated by providing non-judgmental medical advice about what could be treated “over the counter” so to speak and what really needed professional intervention. To make matters even more interesting he seemed to have acquired a second group of informants who overlapped partially with the homeless network, made up of lower power psychics and majik practitioners in the city. Those that weren’t homeless seemed to be all sorts; secretaries, delivery people, a tattoo artist, a private detective specializing in skip tracing, and of course fortune tellers and working psychics. The thing they all had in common was that they all recognized him for either one of two things, his position as the magical Master of the London Sanctum or his link to Londinium. 

As Madam Olga Zanzeppe told him in her fake heavy Eastern European accent “They feel and know you, ‘Speaker for London.’”

John found himself busy enough that he didn’t really have too bad of a time dealing with what he mentally referred to as “Remnants of Sherlock.” Yes, there were things that reminded him of cases and incidents. While time and distance had helped a lot, he still tended to avoid Baker Street and the area around St. Bart’s if he could. Londinium tried to console him showing him images of Sherlock dashing about chasing criminals, interacting with his informants, and even just occasionally standing still looking dramatic. He finally had to tell her to stop quite firmly to avoid being overwhelmed. Still it was nice to know that Londinium considered Sherlock one of hers and that she missed him as much as he did.

Mycroft continued to be somewhat of an issue. Not only did he attempt to keep John under surveillance, either via CCTV, or more recently with actual agents, but he also seemed to think it was his duty to invite John for a meal of some sort every week or two. It became some sort of strange game between the two of them. John would, with some regularity, ditch his shadows. Mycroft or his minions would switch to the CCTV which John would avoid or Londinium would mess with the cameras on his behalf. If he happened to be meeting with either the homeless network or what John was now mentally referring to as his psychics he was extraordinarily careful. Of course, every time John avoided the surveillance the agents, the CCTV, or both would eventually pick him up again and the whole game would rinse and repeat. This would go on for a week or more until either John called Mycroft for a reference to deal with some antique or another that he’d exhumed from the Sanctum house or Mycroft would call John to set up a date to meet. John counted it a “win” when Mycroft would call rather than just randomly kidnapping him off the street.

It was the lunches which allowed John to discover exactly what had been causing Mycroft to be so chronically overworked. They’d been dining at the OXO Tower Restaurant. Mycroft had not been as overbearing as usual; he hadn’t seemed quite as sleep deprived as the last time they had met. John had actually managed to make him laugh with a story about his numerous attempts to get a particular antique tallboy out of the house. John had been afraid that he was going to need to knock a hole in the wall to get it extricated safely. Mycroft, after he had stopped chuckling about the numerous, and admittedly funny in retrospect, attempts to deal with the unwieldly piece of furniture, actually offered to send him a contact for a moving service that would avoid any such hassles in the future. John realized at that point Mycroft was not just following up on a promise to his dead brother but he was actively attempting to befriend him. That was not something John had ever anticipated from the elder Holmes.

After Mycroft had left for a meeting John received a note along with his coffee. One of his psychics, who just happened to work at OXO, had spotted him and wished to pass on some information. John had figured out quite a while ago that Mycroft, among his other duties, was nominally in charge of the agencies colloquially known as MI-5 and MI-6. What he hadn’t known, until his informant told him, was that Mycroft was up to his ears in the process of reactivating MI-13, a WWII era security branch dealing with mutants and superpowered humans. 

John had to admit that given the set of code names and alleged powers his contact described, Mycroft probably had his hands full. There was “Captain Britain” who either was the original super-soldier from WWII or his genetic offspring that had somehow inherited his strength. “Union Jack,” presumably a different individual, was also some sort of super-soldier. “Spitfire” was a mutant with the capacity for extreme speed who just may or may not, according to the scuttlebutt, be a vampire. The most dangerous of the bunch in John’s estimation had the code name “Psylocke” and was, according to his informant, a full-fledged telepath with some telekinetic powers thrown in on the side. After thanking his contact John made a mental vow to attempt to stay the hell out of the way of any of these erstwhile super-heroes if at all possible. 

Two weeks later John was still wondering whether or not the newly reconstituted MI-13 was going to end up blowing his cover. As Stephen had explained early in his training, the masters of the mystic arts all needed to keep a low profile. It tended to help keep the dabblers and civilians from getting in trouble and it also made it quite a bit easier to stop incursions from the metaphysical planes as the potential invaders had a distinct lack of information regarding earth’s magical protectors. John was already uncomfortable with the fact that quite a few of the more powerful psychics knew of his link to Londinium to the point they were referring to him as “Speaker for London” or more often “the Master of London.” He was even more uncomfortable when he found out that many of those same psychics were getting job offers from MI-13 as part of their support and logistics division. Despite Londinium’s reassurances, with a rumored telepath on staff and Mycroft Holmes at its head, John figured his days of anonymity were numbered. Of course all of John’s worries seemed to came to a head when he next had lunch with Mycroft. 

About half way through lunch Mycroft casually asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know John, why 10 out of the last 15 people I’ve hired just happen to have some connection to you?”

“I don’t know,” John had quickly replied. “They fans of the blog or something? I mean I thought all the notoriety had died down after…”

Mycroft gave him the same _don’t be dense_ look that Sherlock used to give him. John, however, was just happy that Mycroft was tactfully ignoring his bad choice of words.

After an awkward moment Mycroft pulled a paper list from his pocket and handed it to John saying, “Maybe you could indulge me with an explanation?”

John read the list and winced internally. Londinium was happily providing faces and locations for every name on the list. He quickly realized it wasn’t even six degrees of separation, it was more like three at most for every single name. Then it dawned on him what he needed to do. He’d give Mycroft the truth, just not the whole truth, for the people on the list. John put the paper down on the table and started in.

“You know over half of these people I know due to Sherlock. These three are former members of his homeless network,” John said as he indicated the names with his finger. “and these four are probably related to cases we had. I’d need to look at the blog or my notes to be absolutely sure.” John looked at the list again, “From the surnames these two of these could be relatives of patients of mine when I was working at the clinic and doesn’t this guy work for the MET?” He looked at the next name, “She’s the granddaughter of the owner of the botanica around the corner.” John pretended to think some more then added, “I’m not completely sure about these four though.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow, “The last young lady goes by the sobriquet _Cat_.”

“Cat who worked at the Pret? Oh yeah, I heard she’d landed a new job. She’s working for you now?”

Mycroft picked up the list and remarked dryly, “The two remaining ladies and one gentleman all have attempted to _chat you up_ at one point or another.”

John was well aware of that fact and diligently ignored Londinum’s snickering in his head, “Really?”

“Yes.”

Clearly Mycroft wasn’t completely satisfied but he didn’t seem inclined to say anything more on the matter. Luckily, their main course arrived at just that moment which meant that the subject could be politely dropped without any awkwardness on either side. By the end of lunch John felt like he’d dodged the bullet at least for the time being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is where the concept borrowed from another fanfiction shows up. Please see [The Master of London](https://archiveofourown.org/works/587437) by teacup_of_doom if you want another slightly different take on an empathetic London and her relationship to one John Watson.


End file.
